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Princeton University Athletics
Players Mentioned
Ivy Baseball Schedule Begins This Weekend as Brown and Yale Visit Clarke Field
March 30, 2007 | Baseball
Games 16-17 – Brown at Princeton
Series Info
GAMETIMES: Saturday, March 31 at 12 noon (Doubleheader)
SITE: Clarke Field (Princeton, N.J.)
RECORDS: Brown (5-11, 0-0 Ivy); Princeton (4-11, 0-0 Ivy)
SERIES RECORD: Princeton leads 92-51-4 overall and 48-25-2 at home
LAST GAME: Brown won 7-1 and 8-7 (10) on April 9, 2006 at Brown
Projected Pitching Match-Ups
GAME 1: Steven Miller (0-2, 3.50) vs. James Cramphin (1-1, 6.41)
GAME 2: Christian Staehely (0-3, 10.91 ERA) vs. Jeff Dietz (1-2, 4.50)
Games 18-19 – Yale at Princeton
Series Info
GAMETIMES: Sunday, April 1 at 12 noon (Doubleheader)
SITE: Clarke Field (Princeton, N.J.)
RECORDS: Yale (6-13, 0-0 Ivy); Princeton (4-11, 0-0 Ivy)
SERIES RECORD: Yale leads 176-142-4 overall. Princeton leads 73-68-1 at home
LAST GAME: Yale won 4-3 and Princeton won 5-3 on April 10, 2006 at Yale
Projected Pitching Match-Ups
GAME 1: David Hale (0-1, 6.75) vs. Brandon Josselyn (1-1, 7.97)
GAME 2: Eric Walz (1-0, 6.60 ERA) vs. tba
The Princeton baseball team kicks off its league season this weekend as it hosts Brown and Yale to Clarke Field to face each in a doubleheader. Princeton is the defending league champion and will look to begin its defense of the title against two teams from the Rolfe Division.
Last season the Tigers went 1-7 in the first two weeks of the league season against the Rolfe Division, then went on a 10-2 run against the Gehrig Division to win it, before sweeping Rolfe Champion Harvard in the Ivy League Championship Series.
In order to get out to a strong start in 2007, the Tigers will look to build off their 15 non-league games played to this point and come out strong this weekend. Princeton is currently 4-11 but of those 11 losses, four came in the opponents final at bat.
After struggling early in the season against teams that had already played several games, the Tiger pitching staff has lowered its team ERA in each of the last eight games that Princeton has played, to its current 6.52 mark, down from a high of 9.72 nine games ago. Offensively the Tigers continue to have a higher batting average than their opponents, currently at .286. Five Tiger regulars are currently batting above .300 and all but one are above .240.
Senior Sal Iacono had two more hits in Wednesday's loss to Rutgers to raise hit batting average to .417 for the season. He also drove in his team-leading 14th run of the season. Freshman Greg Van Horn also added two hits and now stands at .396. Freshman Jack Murphy hit his team-leading third home run in the game and scored a pair of runs, while classmate David Hale had hits in both of his plat appearances after entering the game as a pinch hitter.
Princeton starts the weekend against Brown, a team that Princeton has split its six games with over the past three seasons. Last year Brown won both games at home, taking the opener 7-1 and winning the second game 8-7 in 10 innings. Brown is currently 5-11 overall and will visit Princeton on the tail end of its Spring Break trip. Brown spent the week in South Carolina, taking three of four games from Charleston Southern, splitting two games at The Citadel, and falling to Francis Marion on Thursday. Four of Brown's five wins have come on the trip, although the Bears have now dropped three of four games.
The weekend continues against Yale on Sunday. Yale and Princeton split their games last season with Yale winning the opener 4-3 and the Tigers taking the nightcap 5-3. Princeton swept Yale the previous season. The Bulldogs enter the weekend at 6-13 overall and have lost nine of 10 games, including a mid-week match up on Wednesday against Connecticut. Yale was 5-4 overall after nine games this season. The Bulldogs have wins over Navy, UMBC, Richmond, Davidson and Furman this season.
The Ivy season officially began last weekend when Columbia took three of four games from Penn. All eight Ivy teams are in action this weekend as Yale and Brown will also visit Cornell, and Penn and Columbia host Harvard and Dartmouth.